Teaching Argumentation, Teaching Responsibility for Normative Argument Design

Critical Thinking courses are often the first and only time students receive specifically dedicated normative instruction in argumentation. Unfortunately, most offer a single set of argumentative norms, meant to apply context-independently. They do not address the differing normative structures according to which argumentation can take place, nor the ways in which contextual factors can influence which are appropriate. And they do not bring to students’ attention that they determine the normative design of their arguments through their arguing, nor that they are responsible for it. I argue that this is epistemically and morally harmful, and advocate for a more context-sensitive pedagogy in argumentation.

Kat Stevens is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge. She specializes in Argumentation Theory, specifically the ethics of argumentation and arguing with precedents. She is the co-editor in chief of the journal Informal Logic, and a co-organizer of the Online Speaker Series on the Ethics of Argumentation.

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